The 2019 Copa América will be the 46th edition of the Copa América, the quadrennial international men's association football championship organized by South America's football ruling body CONMEBOL. It will be held in Brazil. Chile are the two-time defending champions, having won the 2015 and 2016 editions of the tournament.

Host country

Originally, the 2019 Copa América was to be hosted by Chile, while Brazil was due to host the 2015 Copa América,[1] due to CONMEBOL's rotation policy of tournaments being held in alphabetical order. However, due to the organization of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in that country, Brazil decided against also hosting the 2015 Copa América. Brazil and Chile's Football Federations discussed the idea of swapping around the order of being hosts of the 2015 and 2019 championships.[2] This agreement was approved by CONMEBOL in 2012.[3]

The 2019 Copa America will be the final edition played on odd years. Starting in 2020, the tournament will be held in the same year as similar tournaments such as the UEFA European Championship.[4][5]

Teams

Apart from all ten CONMEBOL national teams which are eligible to enter. CONMEBOL initially planned to hold a 16-team tournament by inviting six teams from outside CONMEBOL. On 16 March 2018, CONMEBOL announced three teams from CONCACAF and three teams from Asian Football Confederation (AFC) would be invited to participate in the 2019 Copa América.[9][10] On 12 April 2018, it was announced that Qatar, the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, accepted the invitation to participate in the tournament.[11] On 4 May 2018, CONMEBOL announced that the tournament would instead be played with 12 teams, the same number as previous editions since 1993 (apart from the Copa América Centenario held in 2016), with the two guest teams being Qatar and Japan from the AFC.[12] Both teams managed to reach the final of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup held in the UAE, which was won by Qatar.

Qatar will be making their debut appearance in the Copa América becoming the first Arab nation to play in the tournament, while Japan will be making their second appearance, their first since 1999. This will also be the first Copa América to not feature any team from CONCACAF since teams have been invited; in particular, Mexico, which have competed in all ten editions since 1993 as an invited team, will not participate in this tournament. United States have competed in four tournaments, including the 2016 event as host.[13]

Draw

The draw of the tournament took place on 24 January 2019, 20:30 BRST (UTC−2), at the Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[14][15] The 12 teams were drawn into three groups of four, by selecting one team from each of the 4 ranked pots.

At the CONMEBOL Council meeting held on 23 November 2018, it was decided that FIFA Ranking would be the basis to determine the seeds and the distribution of the rest of teams in the pots of the draw. This decision will also be valid for future editions of the Copa America.[16]

For the draw, the teams were allocated to four pots based on the FIFA World Ranking of December 2018 (shown in brackets). Pot 1 contained the hosts Brazil (who were automatically assigned to position A1) and the best two teams, pot 2 contained the next best three teams, and so on for pots 3 and 4. The teams from Pot 1 would be assigned to position 1 in their group, while the teams from Pots 2, 3 and 4 would be drawn to one of the positions 2, 3 or 4 in their group. The two guest teams, Japan and Qatar, which were seeded in different pots, could not be drawn in the same group.[17]